A Couplet From Kipling
by code epic
Summary: One melancholy day in the life of the Three-In-One sometime during the 150 years between the events of New X-Men 150 and 151. A 1,000-word response to a challenge; contains mild femslash.


Disclaimer: I do not own the X-Men. Celeste, Phoebe, and all other characters in this story belong to Marvel. Rico and Helene are partially the products of artistic license. The plot is mine. "The Ballad of Fisher's Boarding-House" belongs to Rudyard Kipling. I make no money from this. Insert witty comment here.

*

"A Couplet From Kipling" by code_epic.

Rating: PG-13.

Word Count: 1,000.

Warnings: One swear word and mild femslash.

Spoilers: New X-Men #146-153.

Notes: Written in response to a challenge on the LJ community, x_men100, with the following as prompts - pearls, lit cigarette, and open window.

*

*

*

**_A Couplet From Kipling_**

*

She says it before Phoebe can.

"Smoking is bad for your health." A second later the footsteps crunching over loose gravel come close enough for Celeste to hear them. She takes another drag on her cigarette, then tilts her head back and right on time Phoebe's face is above her, upside-down and disapproving. Today the sky is a weird bright gray and against this backdrop the second girl's glacier-blue eyes seem washed out.

"Blow that stuff in my face, and I'll push you into the ocean," Phoebe says.

Celeste lets herself look up into those pale eyes a moment longer. They remind her of something very old. "I'll just pull you in with me, Phoebe."

"Then Helene will be very cross with both of us."

Celeste shrugs, an economical motion that also rolls her head forward, and exhales. The wind drags the soupy cholera-yellow haze first to the left, then over her shoulder toward the harbor of the Manhattan Crater. More gravel crunches underfoot as Phoebe moves around to the right until she is abreast with Celeste who sits at the cliff's edge, feet swaying gently over the sharp drop. Phoebe remains standing.

"You could at least smoke the old ones, Cel. That thing's almost pure nuclear fallout in powder form."

"And the water you brush your teeth with, incidentally, counts as liquid radiation. Where would I find a twentieth-century cigarette, anyway? I cleared the black market out a decade ago."

"I think it's closer to two decades now."

"Okay." A belated question occurs to Celeste. "Where's Helene?"

"With Rico again." Phoebe scowls at the horizon, a long smudge marking the uneasy truce between ashen sky and wine-dark ocean.

"Okay."

"You mean, ewww."

Celeste's hand jerks and the mostly unfinished cigarette tumbles from between her fingers out into empty space. Head bowed, she watches her lost prize fall in erratic spirals until it vanishes among the rose-pink foam thrown up by breaker waves.

"You dropped your cigarette," Phoebe says, without surprise.

"Shit," Celeste says calmly.

Phoebe tugs at one sleeve of her faded blue cardigan as gusts snap the front of her sundress against her thighs. The wind has picked up, carrying with it a slightly noxious scent like the combination of burnt rubber and a just-opened package of sour gumdrops. "I don't know what Helene thinks she's doing with Rico."

Celeste wants to say something about it being three generations, three Bohusk boys - it's just a thing that Helene has for them, and at least with each successive litter they get less ugly. But what comes out of her mouth instead is, "Phoebe, it's chilly."

"Half of the year it's chilly," the other girl says, tugging at her sleeve further, "and the other half, it's cold."

"Helene, she's - "

"Never mind. I was just complaining about nothing in general."

"Okay."

"I should've warned you," Phoebe says suddenly, and Celeste looks up at her sister. "I came up here because I saw the cigarette falling."

"I know." A muted glow draws Celeste's eye and she sees that her companion has been tugging not at her sleeve but at the pearl bracelet nestled beneath it. A perfect strand of genuine mother-of-pearls, it is probably an heirloom handed down from Phoebe's mother. Celeste has never asked. Just as Phoebe protests Celeste's cigarettes and Helene's boys, but never seriously tries to take them away.

"I'll bum another one off Logan when we go back down," she adds.

"That," Phoebe says, then stops. Her eyes go out to the horizon where a dark film is slinking from the ocean up into the sky. Twilight. The girls, Celeste thinks, have grown used to the way time skips and stutters for them.

"He left already?"

"Yeah." Phoebe's face is expressionless, but her fingertips trace little figure-eights onto each pearl as if following an obscure rosary. "He said he'll be back before the century turns. Headmistress and I saw him off. Celeste, the upgrade's almost complete."

"I know." She has gone over the blueprints with Cassandra Nova. Within weeks the Three-In-One will hook themselves up to a revamped Cerebra inside what once was the Chartres cathedral. Then the future will be blasted open before them like a naked window, the world sprawled beyond it. So the theory goes - but it fails to explain Celeste's dreams of a fate which comes on wings of black flame heralded by an anti-dawn.

"Something's wrong," Phoebe says, surprising Celeste. "A break in the universe's spine. But whenever I try to look more closely . . ." Her fingers still themselves as she recites softly,

_"They lied about the purple Sea_

_That gave them scanty bread,_

_They lied about the Earth beneath,_

_The Heavens overhead,_

_For they had looked too often on_

_Black rum when that was red."_

She draws in a long breath. "A couplet from Kipling. 'The Ballad of Fisher's Boarding-House.' I took it out of context, but the scenery fits."

"It does," Celeste says, not taking her eyes off either Phoebe's fingers or her pearl bracelet. "I just remembered. It's funny. Your eyes remind me of something very old."

"My eyes remind you of my eyes," Phoebe says, now perfunctory. "You've told me this."

"I have?"

"Mm-hmm, and you're weird, Celeste. Seventy years isn't that old."

Carefully Celeste touches the pearl bracelet, her fingertips a few breath-widths from Phoebe's own. "It doesn't feel that way, though."

Nothing on Phoebe's face changes, but in that melancholy instant Celeste sees - she always wondered why her sister all those years ago said, "Esme is the worst liar," with such vehemence, now she sees that it will be uncomfortable and sweet, Phoebe will have to bend almost double and even then the angle will be awkward - but it is the future and Celeste thinks that just once it should happen the way it is supposed to, slow and sad and with the harsh taste of post-nuclear war cigarette smoke passing between their mouths. So she raises her face to the future, eyes closed against its descent.

*

*

*

Reviews, feedback, and flames are welcomed. Many thanks to wingnut, Marty78, Kitian, phrozen-heart, and earthkidmalady for taking the time to review my "orphandreaming." More of my writing can be found on my LJ, which is linked to in my author profile. 


End file.
